child quotes

  • He had a fear of the dead, and of all inanimate things, rising up around himto claim him; it isthe fearof thepre- eminently solitary child and solitary man.

    - Peter Ackroyd
      Of Charles Dickens. Dickens, prologue.

  • Once in royal David's city Stood a lowly cattle-shed, Where a mother laid her baby In a manger for his bed. Mary was that mother mild, Jesus Christ her little child.

    - Cecil Frances Alexander
      'Once in Royal David's City'.

  • Russian communism isthe illegitimate child of Karl Marx and Catherine the Great.

    -1st Earl
      Speech,  Aarhus University,11  Apr.

  • On every formal visit a child ought to be of the party, by way of provisions for discourse.

    -Jane Austen
    Sense and Sensibility, vol.2, ch.6.

  •    I think my grandmother actually smelled like a cookie and that's enough to get any child's attention.

    - F(rancis) Lee Bailey
    Quoted by Phyllis Hanes in Christian Science Monitor,15  Jun 1988.

  • I can remember wondering as a child if I were a young Macaulay or Ruskin and secretly deciding that I was. My infant mind even was bitter with those who insisted on regarding me as a normal child and not as a prodigy.

    -Bruce Frederick Cummings
      Journal of  A Disappointed Man, 23 Oct.

  • Hark! The herald angels sing! Beecham's Pills are just the thing, Two for a woman, one for a child, Peace on earth and mercy mild!

    - SirThomas Beecham
    Quoted in Neville Cardus Sir Thomas Beecham (1961). Sir Thomas was heir to the Beecham pharmaceutical company.

  • I still hope to create a few great works and then like an old child to finish my earthly course somewhere among kind people.

    - Aphra ne  e  Amis Behn
      Letter to F G  Wegeler.

  • Child! do not throw this book about; Refrain from the unholy pleasure Of cutting all the pictures out! Preserve it as your chiefest treasure.

    - (Joseph) Hilaire Pierre Belloc
      The Bad Child's Book of Beasts, dedication.

  • 'Oh, my friends, be warned by me, That breakfast, dinner, lunch, and tea Are all the human frame requires†' With that the wretched child expires.

    - (Joseph) Hilaire Pierre Belloc
      Cautionary  Tales,'Henry King'.

  • She was not really bad at heart, But only rather rude and wild; She was an aggravating child.

    - (Joseph) Hilaire Pierre Belloc
      Cautionary  Tales,'Rebecca'.

  • And is it true? And is it true, This most tremendous tale of all, Seen in a stained-glass window's hue, A Baby in an ox's stall? The Maker of the stars and sea Become a Child on earth for me?

    - SirJohn Betjeman
      A Few Late Chrysanthemums,'Christmas'.

  • I am but a little child: I know not how to go out or come in.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Kings 3:7.

  • Say unto her, Is it well with thee? is it well with thy husband? isit well with the child? And sheanswered,It is well.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Kings 4:26.

  • Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said,There is a man child conceived.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Job 3:3.

  • Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Proverbs 22:6.

  • Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Ecclesiastes 4:13.

  • For unto us a child is born, unto us a son isgiven: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful,Counseller,The mighty God, The everlasting Father,The Prince of Peace.Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, uponthethrone of David, and uponhis kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the L of hosts will perform this.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDIsaiah 9:6^7.

  • The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw likethe ox. And thesucking child shall playonthehole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice'den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the L, as the waters cover the sea.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDIsaiah11:6^9.

  • Can a woman forget her suckling child, that she should not have compassion on theson of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Isaiah 49:15.

  •    When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Hosea11:1.

  • Be not greedy to add money to money: but let it be as refuse in respect of our child.

    -Bible (Apocrypha)
    Tobit 5:18.

  • Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which wasspoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying,Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is,God with us.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Matthew1:22^3

  • And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Matthew 2:11.

  • And whoso shall receive onesuch little child in my name receiveth me.But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Matthew18:5^6.

  • And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Mark 9:24.

  •    Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and havenotcharity,Iam becomeassounding brass, ora tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all mygoodstofeed thepoor, and though Igivemy body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not herown, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Corinthians13:1^13.

  • Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me, 'Pipe a song about a lamb!' So I piped with merry cheer. 'Piper, pipe that song again!' So I piped. He wept to hear.

    -William Blake
      Songs of Innocence,'Introduction'.

  • My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black, but O! my soul is white; White as an angel is the English child, But I am black as if bereaved of light.

    -William Blake
      Songs of Innocence,'The Little Black Boy'.

  •   O merciful God, grant that the old Adam in this Child may be so buried, that the new man may be raised up in him. Amen.

    -Book of Common Prayer
    Publick Baptism of Infants, Blessing.

  • We receive this Child into the Congregation of Christ's flock, and dosign him with thesign of the Cross, in token that hereafter he shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under his banner against sin, the world, and the devil, and to continue Christ's faithful soldier and servant unto his life's end. Amen.

    -Book of Common Prayer
    Publick Baptism of Infants, Reception of the Child.

  • The winter wind is loud and wild, Come close to me, my darling child; Forsake thy books, and mateless play; And, while the night isgathering grey, We'll talk its pensive hours away. Brooke

    - EmilyJane Bronte« 
      'Faith and Despondency', in Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.

  • He said it was artificial respiration, but now I find I am to have his child.

    -Wilson
      Inside Mr Enderby, pt.1, ch.4.

  • Love is a boy, by poets styled, Then spare the rod, and spoil the child.

    - Samuel Butler
      Hudibras, pt.2, canto1, l.843^4.

  • Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the yard and shot it.

    -Truman Capote
    Quoted in Linda Botts (ed) Loose Talk (1980).

  • If a work of art is to be truly immortal, it must pass quite beyond the limits of the human world, without any sign of common sense and logic. In this way the work will draw nearer to dream and to the mind of a child.

    - Giorgio de Chirico
    Quoted in Saranne  Alexandrian Surrealist  Art (1970).

  • Am I prepared to lay down my life for the British female? Really, who knows?† Ah, for a child in the street I could strike; for the full- blown lady Somehow, Eustace, alas! I have not felt the vocation.

    - Arthur Hugh Clough
      Amours de Voyage, canto 2, pt.4.

  • So for the mother's sake the child was dear, And dearer was the mother for the child.

    - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
      'Sonnet to a Friend Who  Asked Me How I Felt  When the Nurse First Presented My Infant to Me'.

  • He holds him with his glittering eye The Wedding-Guest stood still, And listens like a three years'child: The Mariner hath his will. The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone: He cannot choose but hear; And thus spake on that ancient man, The bright-eyed Mariner.

    - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
      'The Rime of the  Ancient Mariner', pt.1.

  • It's naked child against hungry wolf; it's playing bowls upon a splitting wreck; it's walking on a string across a gulf with millstones fore-and-aft about your neck; but the thing is daily done by manyand many a one; and we fall, face forward, fighting, on the deck.

    -John Davidson
      Ballads and Songs,'Thirty Bob a Week', stanza16.

  • And don't you think you must be a very wicked little child†to be a wax-work child at all?

    - CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
    ^1  Miss Monflathers to Nell. The Old Curiosity Shop, ch.31.

  • Gamp would certainly have drunk its little shoes right off its feet, as with our precious boy he did, and arterwards send the child a errand to sell his wooden leg for any money it 'ud fetch as matches in the rough, and bring it home in liquor.

    - CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
    ^4  Mrs Gamp. Martin Chuzzlewit, ch.25.

  • Go, and catch a falling star, Get with child a mandrake root, Tell me, where all past years are, Or who cleft the Devil's foot.

    -John Donne
    c.1595^1605  'Song: Go and catch a falling star', collected in Songs and Sonnets (1633).

  • A child of eight is many-sided. By eighteen most of his auspicious angles have been polished away; he is

    - (George) Norman Douglas
    US    lawyer,    Associate    Justice    of    the    US    Supreme    Court (1939^80).       His       consistently       liberal       decisions       were occasionally   controversial,   such   as   the   stay   of   execution granted to the Rosenbergs, convicted spies, in1953.

  • By education most have been misled; So they believe, because they so were bred. The priest continues what the nurse began, And thus the child imposes on the man.

    -John Dryden
      The Hind and the Panther, pt.3, l.389^92.

  • Curious! I seem to hear a child weeping.

    -Will(iam Henry) Dyson
      Cartoon caption in the Daily Herald,17 May. French minister Clemenceau is shown leaving the Palais de Versailles with Woodrow Wilson and Lloyd George after signing the peace treaty with Germany. The'child' is the generation of1940.

  • The mother's yearning, thatcompletest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man.

    - George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans Eliot
      Adam Bede, ch.43.

  • I always say that a successful parent is one who raises a child so that they can pay for their own psychoanalysis.

    - Nora Ephron
      In The Guardian, 26  Jun.

  • The biggest difference between Lillian as a grown-up and Lillian as a child was that she was taller.

    - Peter Feibleman
      On Lillian Hellman. Lily.

  • What is the use of a new-born child?

    - Anne Frank
    Reply when questioned as to the use of a new invention. Quoted in J Parton Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (1864), pt.4, ch.17.

  • I am proud that I am an Australian, a daughter of the Southern Cross, a child of the mighty bush. I am thankful I am a peasant, a part of the bone and muscle of my nation, and earn my bread by the sweat of my brow, as man was meant to do. I rejoice I was not born a parasite, one of the blood-suckers who loll on velvet and satin, crushed from the proceeds of human sweat and blood and souls.

    -of Bin Bin
    My Brilliant Career, ch.38.

  • Lord Byron is only great as a poet; as soon as he reflects he is a child.

    -JohannWolfgang von Goethe
      Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe,18  Jan.

  • The poet is the unsatisfied child who dares to ask the difficult question which arises from the schoolmaster's answer to his simple question, and then the still more difficult question which arises from that.

    - Robert von Ranke Graves
    Recalled on his death,7 Dec1985.

  • Hisfacewearing thefixityof athoughtful child'swho has felt the pricks of life somewhat before his time.

    -Thomas Hardy
      Jude the Obscure, pt.1, ch.1.

  • I'm wild again Beguiled again A simpering, whimpering child again, Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I.

    - Lorenz Hart
      'Bewitched' (music by Richard Rodgers), from Pal Joey.

  •    Love, you shall perfect for me this child Whose small imperfect limits would keep breaking: Within new limits now, arrange the world And square the circle: four walls and a ring.

    - SeamusJustin Heaney
      Death of a Naturalist,'Poem: For Marie'.

  • Mama may have, papa may have, But God bless the child that's got his own! That's got his own.

    - Billie Holiday
      'God Bless the Child', with  Arthur Herzog  Jr.

  • The Grizzly bear is huge and wild; He has devoured the infant child. The infant child is not aware He has been eaten by the bear.

    - A(lfred) E(dward) Housman
    'Infant Innocence', collected  The Oxford Book of Light Verse (1938).

  • Personne ne garde un secret comme un enfant. No one keeps a secret like a child.

    -Victor Marie Hugo
      Les Mise  rables, vol.2, bk.7, ch.8.

  •    Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatsoever abysses Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.

    -T(homas) H(enry) Huxley
      Letter to Charles Kingsley.

  • One of the most obvious facts about grown-ups, to a child, is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child. 435

    - Randall Jarrell
    Introduction to Christina Stead  The Man Who Loved Children (1965).

  • Our tastesgreatly alter. The lad does not care for the child'srattle, and theoldmandoesnotcarefor theyoung man's whore.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.2.

  • Then hath thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers, Fresh as the air, and new as are the hours. The early cherry, with the later plum, Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come: The blushing apricot, and woolly peach Hang on thy walls, that every child may reach.

    - Ben Jonson
      The Forest,'To Penshurst'.

  • Maxima debetur puero reverentia, si quid turpe paras. If you are planning any misdeed, never forget that a child has a first claim on your respect.

    -Juvenal full name Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis
    Satirae, no.14, l.47 (translated by Peter Green).

  • Every work of art is the child of its time, often it is the mother of our emotions.

    -Wassily Kandinsky
      Concerning the Spiritual in  Art.

  • Fast fading violets covered up in leaves; And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

    -John Keats
      Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St.  Agnes and Other Poems,'Ode to a Nightingale', stanza 5.

  • Ladies and gentlemen, unless the play is stopped, the child cannot possibly go on.

    -John Philip Kemble
    Addressing the audience during a performance that was being much disrupted by a child crying.  Attributed.

  • Father in Heaven, whenthethoughtof Thee wakesinour hearts, let it not awaken like a frightened bird that flies about in dismay, but like a child waking from its sleep with a heavenly smile.

    - So«  ren Aabye Kierkegaard
    Journal entry (translated by Alexander Dru,1938).

  • Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half devil and half child.

    - (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
      'The White Man's Burden'.

  • But there was one Elephanta new Elephantan Elephant's Childwho was full of 'satiable curtiosity, and that means he asked ever so many questions.

    - (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
      Just So Stories,'The Elephant's Child'.

  • A child's a plaything for an hour.

    - Charles Lamb
      'Parental Recollections'. This is often attributed to his sister Mary.

  • I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature†but the prettier the kind of a thing is, the more desirable it is that it should be pretty of its kind.

    - Charles Lamb
      Essays of Elia,'A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People'.

  • Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength.

    - Charles Lamb
      Essays of Elia,'Witches and Other Night-Fears'.

  • The glamour Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

    - D(avid) H(erbert) Lawrence
      'Piano'.

  • Nothing is more difficult than to determine what a child takes in, and does not take in, of its environment and its teaching. This fact is brought home to me by the hymns which I learned as a child, and never forgot. They mean more to me almost than the finest poetry, and they have for me a more permanent value, somehow or other.

    - D(avid) H(erbert) Lawrence
    Collected in Phoenix II: Uncollected, Unpublished and Other Prose Works (1968).

  • This is the mother who one day chose to smother the child with kisses, and blows and blows and blows.

    - Roger McGough
      'Kisses and Blows'.

  • The difference between writing a book and being on television is the difference between conceiving a child and having a baby made in a test tube.

    - Norman Kingsley Mailer
      'The Siege of Mailer: Hero to Historian', in Village Voice, 21  Jan.

  •    So the child was delyverd unto Merlyn, and so he bare it forth unto syre Ector and made an holy man to crysten hym and named hym Arthur.

    - SirThomas   d.1471 Malory
    c.1470  Morte d'Arthur, bk.1, ch.2.

  • E M Forster never gets any further than warming the teapot. He's a rare fine hand at that. Feel this teapot. Is it not beautifully warm? Yes, but there ain't going to be no tea. And I can never be perfectly certain whether Helen was got with child by Leonard Bast or by his fatal forgotten umbrella. All things considered, I think it must have been the umbrella.

    -Beauchamp
       Journal entry, May.

  • And he who gives a child a treat Makes joy-bells ring in Heaven's street, And he who gives a child a home Builds palaces in Kingdom come, And she who gives a baby birth Brings Saviour Christ again to Earth.

    -John Edward Masefield
      'The Everlasting Mercy'.

  • Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age The child isgrown, and puts away childish things. Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. Nobody that matters, that is.

    - Edna St Vincent Millay
      Wine From These Grapes,'Childhood is the Kingdom where Nobody dies'.

  • It was the winter wild While the Heaven born child All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies; Nature in awe to him Had doffed her gaudy trim With her great Master so to sympathize; It was no season then for her To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.

    -John Milton
      'On the Morning of Christ's Nativity','The Hymn', stanza 3.

  •    Likeall thevery young wetook it forgranted that making love is child's play.

    - Nancy Freeman Mitford
      The Pursuit of Love, ch.3.

  • Surely, it is in youth man is most thoroughly depraved. Hell lies about us in our infancy. The youthful innocency sung by aged poets (who forget their first childhood) is nothing but ignorance of evil. As the child comes to know evil, he loves it.

    -Yukio pseudonym of  Hiraoka Kimitake Mishima
      In the Jail Journal,13  Apr.

  • I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.

    -Vladimir Nabokov
      Strong Opinions, foreword.

  • Till I, high in the tower of my time Among familiar ruins, began to cry For accident, sickness, justice, war and crime, Because all died, because I had to die. The snow fell, the trees stood, the promise kept, And a child I slept.

    - Howard Nemerov
      New Poems,'The View from an  Attic Window'.

  • I make a pact with you,Walt Whitman I have detested you long enough. I come to you as a grown child Who has had a pig-headed father I am old enough not to make friends.

    - Ezra Loomis Pound
      Lustra,'A Pact'.

  • There is no looking-glass here and I don't know what I am like now. I remember watching myself brush my hair and how my eyes looked back at me. The girl I saw was myself and yet not quite myself. Long ago when I was a child and very lonely I tried to kiss her. But the glass was between ushard, cold and misted over with my breath.Now they havetaken everything away.What am I doing in this place and who am I?

    -Jean pseudonym of  Ellen Gwendolen Rees Williams Rhys
      The consciousness of Antoinette Mason/Bertha Rochester at a point of intersection with the text of Jane Eyre. Wide Sargasso Sea, pt.3.

  • Wer zeigt ein Kind, so wie es steht? Wer stellt es ins Gestirn und gibt das MaÞ des Abstands ihm in die Hand? Who shows a child as he really is? Who sets him in his constellation and puts the measuring-rod of distance in his hand?

    - Rainer Maria Rilke
      Duinieser Elegien, no.4 (translated by Stephen Mitchell in The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke,1989).

  • Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn, Grew lean while he assailed the seasons; He wept that he was ever born, And he had reasons.

    - Edwin Arlington Robinson
      TheTown down the River,'Miniver Cheevy'.

  • It's a family jokethat when Iwas a tinychild Iturned from the window out of which I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefullyasked,'Momma, do we believe in winter?'

    - Philip Milton Roth
      Portnoy's Complaint,'The Most Unforgettable Character I've Ever Met'.

  • The first duty of a state is to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed and educated, till it attain years of discretion.

    -John Ruskin
      Time andTide, letter13.

  • The simple dignity of a child drinking a bowl of milk embodies the fascination of an ancient rite.

    - Carl Sandburg
    Quoted in Personalia, the Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (1970).

  • O Caledonia! stern and wild, Meet nurse for a poetic child! Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, Land of the mountain and the flood. Land of my sires! what mortal hand Can e'er untie the filial band That knits me to thy rugged strand!

    - Sir Walter Scott
      The Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto 6, stanza 2.

  •   Go child, who is my sin and nothing more.

    - Anne ne  e Harvey Sexton
      To Bedlam and PartWay Back,'Unknown Child in the MaternityWard'.

  •   If you strike a child take care that you strike it in anger, evenattheriskof maiming itfor life. A blow incold blood neither can nor should be forgiven.

    - George Bernard Shaw
      Man and Superman,'Maxims for Revolutionists: How to Beat Children'.

  • The one point on which all women are in furious secret rebellion against the existing law is the saddling of the righttoa child with the obligationto becometheservant of a man. 780

    - George Bernard Shaw
      Getting Married, preface,'The Right to Motherhood'.

  • I was their plaything and their idol, and something bettertheir child.

    - Mary Godwin Shelley
      Frankenstein, speaking of his parents. Frankenstein, ch.1.

  • Sun-girt city, thou hast been Ocean's child, and then his queen; Now is come a darker day, And thou soon must be his prey.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'Lines written amongst the Euganean Hills', l.115^18.

  • I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die, For after the rain when with never a stain The pavilion of Heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'The Cloud'.

  • Ere Babylon was dust, The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child, Met his own image walking in the garden, That apparition, sole of men, he saw.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      Prometheus Unbound, act1, l.191^4.

  • We were now actually in the inner sanctuary of the Nanda Devi Basin, and at each step I experienced that subtlethrill which anyone of imagination must feel when treading hitherto unexplored country† My most blissful dream as a child was to be in some such valley, free to wander where I liked, and discover for myself some hitherto unrevealed glory of Nature. Now the reality was no less wonderful than that half-forgotten dream; and of how many childish fancies can that be said, in this age of disillusionment ?

    - Eric Earle Shipton
      Nanda Devi.

  •    But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay; Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows† Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite, 'Fool,'said my muse to me; 'look in thy heart, and write.'

    - Nevil originally Nevil Shute Norway Shute
    Astrophel and Stella, sonnet1.

  • With lullay, lullay, like a child, Thou sleepest too long, thou art beguiled.

    -John Skelton
      'Lullay, Lullay, Like a Child'.

  • Go little book, thy self present, As child whose parent is unkent: To him that is the president Of noblesse and of chivalry, And if that Envy bark at thee, As sure it will, for succour flee.

    - Edmund Spenser
      The Shepherd's Calendar,'To His Book'.

  • A child should always say what's true, And speak when he is spoken to, And behave mannerly at table: At least as far as he is able.

    - Robert Louis Stevenson
      A Child's Garden ofVerses, no.5,'Whole Duty of Children'.

  • I have been assured by a very knowing American of my Acquaintance in London; that a young healthy Child, well nursed, is, at aYearold, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome Food; whether Stewed,Roasted,Baked, or Boiled; and,I make no doubt, that it will equally serve in a Fricassee, or a Ragout.

    -Jonathan Swift
      A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents or Country.

  • A Child will make two Dishes at an Entertainment for Friends; and when the Family dines alone, the fore or hind Quarter will makea reasonable Dish; and seasoned with a little Pepper or Salt, will be very good Boiled on the fourth Day, especially in Winter.

    -Jonathan Swift
      A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents or Country.

  • Rose a nurse of ninety years, Set his child upon her knee^ Like summer tempest came her tears^ 'Sweet my child, I live for thee.'

    -Tennyson
      The Princess, pt.6, added song, stanza 4.

  • Come not, when I am dead, To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave, To trample round my fallen head, And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save. There let the wind sweep and the plover cry; But thou, go by. Child, if it were thine error or thy crime I care no longer, being all unblest; Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time, And I desire to rest. Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie: Go by, go by.

    -Tennyson
      'Come not, when I am dead', complete poem.

  •    He lifted up his head a little, and quickly said,'Adsum!' and fell back† He, whose heart was as that of a little child, had answered to his name, and stood in the presence of The Master.

    -William Makepeace Thackeray
    ^5  The Newcomes, vol.1, ch.80.

  • She was cut off fromthe past and therefore did not live in the present. But suddenly, as she stood close against a pine tree and breathed in its sharp, bitter scent, a clear space opened to her childhood, as though a wind had sprung fromthesea, clearing a mist.It wasnot a memory from the past, it was the past itself, as alive, as real; and she knew that she and the child of forty years ago were the same person.

    - D(onald) M(itchell) Thomas
    TheWhite Hotel, ch.4.

  • See, a good habit makes a child a man, Whereas a bad one makes a man a beast.

    -John Webster
      TheWhite Devil, act 2, sc.1.

  • I have heard grief named the eldest child of sin.

    -John Webster
      TheWhite Devil, act 5, sc.4.

  • Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, Look upon a little child; Pity my simplicity, Suffer me to come to thee.

    - Charles Wesley
      'GentleJesus', collected in Hymns and Sacred Poems.

  • Thurber did not write the waya surgeon operates, he wrotethewayachildskipsrope,thewayamousewaltzes.

    - E(lwyn) B(rooks) White
      In the NewYorker,11 Nov.Tribute toJamesThurber.

  • Shewould imprisonthe child inherhouseby theforceof love.

    - Patrick Victor Martindale White
      TheTree of Man, ch.7.

  • Three years she grew in sun and shower, 924 The Nature said,'A lovelier flower On earth was never sown; This Child I to myself will take; She shall be mine, and I will make A Lady of my own.'

    -William Wordsworth
      'ThreeYears she grew in sun and shower', stanza1 (published1800).

  • My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.

    -William Wordsworth
      'My heart leaps up when I behold', complete poem (published1807).

  • Thou Child of Joy, Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts.

    -William Wordsworth
    c.1802^1803  'Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood', stanza 3 (published1807).

  • Propinquity had brought Imagination to that pitch where it casts out All that is not itself. I had grown wild And wandered murmuring everywhere,'My child, my child.'

    -W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
      'A Bronze Head', l.18^21. Collected in Last Poems (1939).

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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